am i in between
by tints
Summary: it's half-time. or caroline and klaus meet half-way through a century. future fic.


**disclaimer**: i do not own these characters.

set in the future. based heavily off of the klaus/caroline conversation in 3x20. written for jay, who gave me the prompt: _it's a cold day in a cruel world, i really wish i could have saved you; then who would save me from myself?_. title's from phantogram's _when i'm small_.

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**am i in between**

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There isn't a door — not if she doesn't count the cafe door, which doesn't apply at all, since she's sitting outside a cafe in Rome with the menu held in her hands and her mind spinning into overdrive with all the sounds and scents — and it's only half a century, with every other minute spent thinking about him, but that doesn't mean she can't hear the gym clock ticking, ticking, ticking down. She doesn't forget. She forgoes buying real estate, instead settling into staying in hotels for only a few weeks before moving onto the next city, the next continent. If she stays away from approaching a door, then she knows she's one step away from him.

The seat opposite her scrapes against the ground. It's not as loud as the laughter of a red head turning the corner, with her arm in a man with a dark head of hair. She doesn't look up, seeing this from the corner of her eye; her heart skips a little, thinking it's him. The one that she wants; someone younger, less experienced, more eager, just as scarred.

She ignores the person who's stolen the seat reserved for someone who doesn't even know she's here. He takes his time, shifting in the chair, making it's bones crack much like he did with Stefan's and even her own, but nothing like how he broke Tyler's to the point where they can no longer set themselves straight.

His arms are crossed and his voice sounds distant, like he's looking away from her, maybe at the window, sizing up the patrons inside. Who looks good enough for dinner? "Where's your mutt?" he says, voice sounding bored. He might as well be picking at his nails to complete the picture.

She frowns. Her grip on the menu only tightens. "Tyler isn't here." She looks up, eyes narrowed, and she straightens the back of the menu. "And neither will you in a few minutes."

"Interrupting, am I?" His gaze is on hers, fully and sharp, and she feels like breaking their eye contact with the menu. Maybe at his face, Xena-style, or maybe as a shield; but she's never been one to hide behind anything when it comes to Klaus.

Caroline inhales through her nose, something noisily, which isn't something she'd call romantic, not that she thinks sitting with Klaus is anything like it. They must look like it to an outsider, maybe thinking that he's pissed her off somehow for being late; she's pissed herself off for circling around the cities she knows he loves — or assumes he does, since she doesn't want to know him at all — without even realising it. Living her life around someone else — _again_— was crossed off her bucket list fifty years ago.

He looks smug. "Fifty years by yourself ..."

"And fifty years spent stalking someone who is _so_ not interested," she almost rolls her eyes, but doesn't. She'd scoff, but she knows that that's all it would take for him to flip the table. She thinks about saying _We make quite the pair _but they don't. She's light and he's dark; she enjoys people while he likes ripping them apart. She likes to pretend and deny herself what she truly is while he embraces it and owns it. They're two puzzle pieces that don't belong together, not even on the same picture. She sighs, "You'd think with age you'd take a hint."

Klaus is silent, smile still on his face, although it looks more forced than anything. Painted on like in his own drawings; he's capable of frowning at her, of forming his mouth into a line, but it never lasts long when it's in her presence. He only continues to look amused, as if she's a plaything and he's the puppeteer. She's always existed in his sandbox — or was it someone else's? "It was only by coincidence that brought me here. I was in Paris only last week," he says, looking down at his fingers, his arms resting along the arm rest of the chair, "taking Rebekah to see the sights." He looks up with a grin.

"And you just happened to be on this street right now?" She raises her eyebrows, giving him a pause to answer. "You know what? I don't care." Her gaze returns to her menu, neck bent a little in determination not to look at him. "So, leave me alone. I have a date."

She hears him exhale, as if annoyed, because he is. She'll forever be a teenager, stuck in a mentality that will frustrate her until she finds herself properly dead. She's forever stubborn, forever fearful of being second best, forever in need of control. When Klaus is around, the chess board shifts from her own to something more dangerous and cunning.

"Where _is _Tyler?"

"He's somewhere safe. Far, far away from you."

"And why is it that you're not? Far, far away from me." He leans back in the chair, it cracking underneath his weight. Even while trying to be normal, he finds it impossible. The strength and power he holds extends even into the way he sits and pretends to be something he hates. "Rome is kind of my city."

"You don't own the world. It's free speech or free travel, whatever. You can't just mark everything as your territory with your words." Except he has. He's created a territory, a boundary for her, that doesn't include that small town. The small town boy is of her own doing, her own desire to flee and see the world because a man with a temper like a child's put ideas into her head that she could be bigger and better than what she had ever allowed herself to be before.

"Where is Stefan? Damon?" His eyebrows raise, as if challenging, and he pauses, although it only lasts a breath. "Elena?" he says her friend's name as though it's something interesting, like there's a secret there that only they know. Her back straightens. "Why is it that they've left you all alone, Caroline?"

"I'm not alone," she says, quickly. She glares. She is. The seat before her is missing a glass. The chair hasn't been moved since she got here. The only thing that has sat on that chair are her feet. "I have friends outside of Mystic Falls. Ones I don't have to change into being my minion or compel."

Klaus glances down, something she remembers seeing at the Mikaelson Ball so many years ago when she kept rebuffing him. It's a moment that he allows himself to have before he sharpens up, his face composed into something amused. He's far from it. "I see I've overstayed my welcome."

Caroline scoffs, every much reminiscent of the 1920's dance. If she wasn't stuck for eternity as a teenager, with the mentality to _rebel, rebel, rebel _against someone who thought they had her pinned down when, truly, they did, (she just didn't want to see it), then maybe she would've settled with simply shaking her head and looking away. The scoff's there just for him.

He doesn't move for a few moments, gaze taking her in while she tries to erase his from her mind and sitting opposite her. "My door has always been open." He gets up, placing a piece of paper — she assumes it to be the menu before she _remembers_— on top of the table. "As it will continue to be for the next fifty years."

She keeps her gaze on the table, only seeing him in her peripheral. If she doesn't acknowledge him, he won't feel encouraged to prolong his stay. Though, that's never been their dance; she discourages while he seems to only become even more determined to prove himself. What she wants is locked away in a small town, in the form of a dark-haired boy and a ghost she left lying in a hospital bed.

"It was nice seeing you, Caroline. It seems as though the fates simply wanted us to meet."

"Or you were pulling creepy strings," she says, eyes settling hard on his shoulders. He gives a small shrug, as if deflecting, as if pretending this isn't a defeat for him — it's something she wouldn't have noticed all those years ago.

He pauses, then turns around and places his hands into the pockets of his pants. He walks away, strides powerful, to meet his brother across the road. He has a camera in his hands, something that makes them both seem utterly human. Tearing her gaze away from them, Caroline picks up her glass and places it on top of the piece of paper that Klaus left behind. The wind keeps playing with its edges.

It's a drawing of the Eiffel Tower. Her back is to the viewer, her gaze on the famous landmark, camera in hand and held high up above her head. Beside her is a man in a dark shirt and slacks, hands in his pockets. She remembers this quite differently; conversations with strangers, names she can't place faces to, standing along while gazing up at this beast of French history.

_— For when you want a friend._


End file.
